1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of electric vehicle technologies, and in particular, to an intelligent multiple-loop electric vehicle cooling system.
2. Description of Related Art
More attention is being paid to environment issues due to energy consumption, such as pollution resulting from the use of petroleum. Electric vehicles, which do not use petroleum, are becoming increasingly popular because of this concern regarding environmental pollution and energy conservation. As such, electric vehicles have currently experienced and are expected to experience increasing production and sales volumes year over year.
Compared with the conventional vehicles, electric vehicles do not output greenhouse gasses and are therefore very friendly to environment. However, electric vehicles have some development bottlenecks, a relative long charging time, and a mileage range generally being not better than that of conventional vehicles. To reduce a gap with the conventional vehicles with regards to range, electric vehicles are required to be as energy efficient as possible. For current electric vehicles, energy-savings due to the efficient cooling systems of the electric vehicles are generally not significant. Further, a battery pack cooling system may not be shared with an electric drive module cooling system.
Generally, cooling of a battery pack either excessively relies on air conditioning cooling, causing the mileage range to be shorter, or relies on a battery radiator disposed in front of a condenser to perform cooling, resulting in reduced efficiency of the front-end module. In addition, this set up also adds wind resistance of to the vehicle, resulting in a less fuel efficient vehicle.
The Chinese Patent No. CN205768485U discloses an electric vehicle with an integrated thermal management system including a main heat exchanger, a passenger-compartment heat exchanger, an electric control system, a motor pump, a four-way reversing valve, a condenser, a solenoid valve, two three-way ball valves, an evaporator, a water pump, a battery grip, a heat pipe, and a battery heat exchanger. In this arrangement, the heat flow of three thermal management systems (an air conditioning system, a motor electric control system, and a battery pack thermal management system) of an entire vehicle can be fully utilized for improving cooling efficiency of the entire-vehicle. By so doing, battery power requirement for heat dissipation and heating are reduced, temperature balance between battery cells is ensured, and mileage range of the vehicle and service life of a battery system are prolonged. However, this arrangement has the drawback that control loops formed in the system are relatively few and functions of components inside the system cannot be effectively controlled.